The dark fantastic (13 page)

"Do you really believe that?" His eyes pleaded desperately for reassurance.

Judith weighed for a second one alternative of self-interest against another. Then she saw that by erasing this man's fear she could bind him heart and mind to herself.

"Yes, Mr. Tomlinson, I do. For when I came downstairs again that night I found Thorne in the trundle bed, fast asleep. She could hardly have left her bed in the meantime and fallen asleep so quickly."

"God bless you, Judith, for telling me that."

For the second time in their acquaintance he had called her Judith. And it had been, curiously, as on that other occasion, when she had relieved his anxiety about Thorne.

He was able to talk now without restraint.

"You don't know what thoughts I've had, God forgive me! But Abigail hated her so—made her life so miserable. You could hardly blame the child if she had held enmity in return. I was afraid—she might have been tempted—to work on Abigail's insane superstition. She's very bright, you know But now"— he looked at Judith with wet eyes—"this may sound strange coming from a man who has just buried his wife, but I think I love you, Judith, for your kindness to my poor little Thorne."

Judith sat very still, uncertain what kind of declaration of love this might be.

"I am very fond of Thorne, Mr. Tomlinson."

"I know you are. That's why it will be a personal loss to both of us not to have you teaching at Timberley next year."

So unprepared was Judith for this shock that she cried sharply, ''Not teach at Timberley? What do you mean?"

"Al Carpenter has recovered. He wants the school back."

"And I'm to be turned out to accommodate him!" Just in time she remembered that she would gain nothing by a display of shrewish temper. She asked in a different tone, "Haven't I given satisfaction?"

"You have indeed. But Mr. Carpenter has many friends in the district. And a male teacher is always preferred. You understood the position was only temporary, didn't you?"

There was no argument on this point. But Judith had trusted to her gambler's luck that Al Carpenter might be permanently disabled.

"Then you've known for some time that I was going to be let out?" Frustrated anger rose in her throat, tears of disappointment in her eyes.

"I've known since Christmas," said Richard.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

He looked at her with such disarming kindness that her anger melted.

"I didn't want to give you bad news until I had something to offer you in its place."

Hope rose again. He had waited till after his wife's death— because he had something to offer. . . .

She whispered, "What do you mean?"

"I have found you a school near Staunton."

"Oh."

Staunton was in another county.

Judith studied her slim white hands. This was March. Rural school was out in April, so that the bigger boys could help with spring plowing. She would have to work fast or everything would have been done in vain.

"It is good of you, Mr. Tomlinson, to go to so much trouble on my account. I know I should be happy to have the promise of a school at Staunton. And I would be if it weren't for leaving Thorne. I'm afraid when I'm gone that your mother will send her to Kentucky."

"Mother! Send Thorne away? Oh no. Mother has no grudge against the child."

"I don't mean that," said Judith gently. "I stayed with the children the night—Miss Abigail died. Thorne was very nervous. I had to take her up to my room. Your boys never woke up. I was sitting with them when your mother came upstairs."

He seemed touched by that.

"I told Miss Ann about Thorne, and she said a strange thing, Mr. Tomlinson. She said, Tm too old to bring up so young a child. Too old—and too tired.' "

"But Thorne is much older than my boys." He looked puzzled.

"Thorne is a girl," explained Judith delicately. "Girls in their teens are sometimes difficult. That is what your mother meant."

He sat in troubled silence. The brooding look came back into his eyes.

"Your mother is no longer young, Mr. Tomlinson. Three children are no small job. Your boys are her grandsons and no trouble to her because she's had them from infancy and understands them. But Thorne has a peculiar background. Your mother can hardly be blamed for feeling she's unequal to the task of bringing her up."

''But she doesn't need bringing up. All she needs is love and a little patience."

"I agree with you." Judith's eyes were sparkling with moisture. 'If you could have seen how she clung to me that night-like a child to her mother."

He said naively, "You're rather young to be Thorne's mother," and then flushed as he realized what he had said. But he looked at Judith with pleasure, as though discovering beauty where he had seen none before. Something that had stretched like a delicate cord between them from the beginning tightened like a bowstring. Was it mutual love for an orphan girl or was it something more personal? He was not a vain man, but it was impossible not to know that this charming young woman had practically offered to become his wife.

"Miss Judith, this is neither the time nor the place for me to speak of what should not even be in my mind at this moment. My wife's death—and before that, her long illness--has been too sad a thing for me ever again to give much thought to personal happiness. But with three children on my hands I realize that I must in time make other plans for the future."

He paused in his lengthy, stilted speech, and every pulse in Judith's body seemed suspended, "I can't speak of those plans at the present. But someday, if you are kind enough to listen, I should like to talk to you about them."

Judith said, "How can you talk to me if I am at Staunton?"

He looked at her with a faint trace of his old mischief.

"Perhaps we shall meet again in Terre Haute next fall and see a Shakespeare play together."

CHAPTER 11

The summer following Abigail's death was the happiest Thorne had ever known. She woke each morning, expectantly, to the crow of a very young rooster. Always before she had protested the cockcrow and the enforced early rising of the farm. But now she sprang joyously from bed, as though the summer day were not long enough to hold all the delight it promised. Sometimes she was dressed and roaming the woods before Millie had her breakfast fire started. Berries were ripe now and nothing, to Richard's thinking, equaled a bowl of blackberries fresh with dew to begin the morning meal.

Never, since early childhood when parental love cushioned her against reality, had Thorne lived in such security. The hand-to-mouth existence of her carnival days, succeeded by the constant threats of Abigail, had so inured her to anxiety that for a time it was hard for her to realize that she no longer had anything to worry about. Not until after school was out and Judith had returned to the city and it was known for a fact that she would not be coming back was Thorne able to accept the permanency of her happiness. Even then, her first thought on waking was a swift, imploring prayer,

"Please, God, let it last. Don't take it away. Let it be like this always." Sometimes, remembering Abigail, she would add, "Don't let me be glad she's dead. But if I am, please forgive me."

Remembering Judith, she would not pray at all.

Sometimes there was the faintest shadow of a cloud on the clear blue of her horizon, like the morning Ricky knocked upon her door while she was braiding her hair. She had inherited the bird's-eye-maple room upon Judith's departure, and it gave her a wonderful feeling of grown-up importance to have a door upon which people must knock and to be able to say "Come in" to her former bedfellows. The little boys still called upon her to button them up before going down to breakfast.

"Oh, look what Miss Judith left behind," cried Rodgie, who had followed his brother into the room. He was exploring the mysteries of the bureau and had discovered a cut-glass bottle with a rubber ball attached. When squeezed, it filled the air with delicious scent.

Thorne, intent on connecting Ricky's panty waist with his drawers, looked up. "Where did you get that, Rodgie?"

"In the little cubby. Didn't you know it was there?"

She had not seen it until that moment. "Let me have it, please."

"No. It's not yours. It's mine. I found it." Rodgie clutched his treasure to his stomach.

"It's not yours," said Ricky with an air of superior judgment. "It belongs to Miss Judith, and you'd better put it back where you found it. She won't like it when she comes back, if she finds her scent bottle gone."

Thorne's face blanched. "She's not coming back," she said quickly.

Ricky said smugly, "Whatcha wanta bet?"

"What do you mean?" asked Thorne.

The young man, who still had trouble with buttons and buttonholes, looked wise with the newly acquired wisdom of seven years.

"Jesse Moffat bets she's comin' back. I heard him talkin' to Uncle Will. She never woulda left that bottle if she wasn't comin' back."

Thorne stared at the inoffensive bottle as though it had been a sharp instrument on which she had inadvertently cut herself.

There were other storm warnings from Millie. Perhaps it was only the black woman's superstition, perhaps it was the irritability of advancing age and rheumatism which made Thorne's suddenly released spirits the subject of gloomy foreboding. As she watched the girl who had once been afraid to lift her voice, who had slipped through the house like a shadow, now running in and out as she pleased, laughing, shouting, playing games, Millie's dark speculations took voice.

"Steppin' mighty free and easy now Miss Abby's daid, ain't yuh? Bettah watch out."

The words—still more, the tone of voice—cast a pall on Thorne's young gaiety.

"What do you mean, Millie?"

"Bad luck dancin' on a grave."

The two were alone in the big black kitchen. It was after supper and Thorne was helping with the dishes so that Miss Ann could sit on the porch under the June roses. The evening was lush with fragance, and by and by Richard was going down to the crossroads for the mail and Thorne was going with him. The world was right and good and brimming with promise until Millie spoke.

"I'm not dancing on a grave. Why do you say a thing like that?"

"Good luck don' las' that comes from somebody dyin'," warned the old woman grimly. "Bettah not act too happy. She won't like it."

"But she's gone, Millie. What I do can't bother her now."

The turbaned head nodded gloomily. "That's whut I mean. She's gone. An' we don' want her comin' back." The familiar black face was frightening in the murky shadows of the room.

But outdoors the sky was red with sunset, and from beyond the open windows Richard's whistle set the earth back on its axis. Thorne flung down her dish towel and ran out to join him, glad to escape from the dusky kitchen and Millie's baleful croakings.

As they crossed the side yard they heard buggy wheels and voices, topped by a high youthful giggle. Thorne recognized the giggle.

"It's the Turners. Nancy said they'd be over this evening. If she's seen me I'll have to go back."

Richard seized her hand and drew her behind a clump of lilacs. Together they waited, like two conspirators, while the Turner surrey passed along the lane and deposited Kate and Hugh Turner, their three children, and Hugh's fifteen-year-old sister Nancy on the Timberley lawn. When the visitors had disappeared around the corner of the front porch the truants ran swiftly down the slope toward the shelter of the woods.

"Remember, we didn't see them," cautioned Richard. "If they're still here when we come back we must be quite surprised to find we have company."

His mischievous wink belied the droll gravity of his tone, and Thorne laughed rapturously. Oh, it was fun to be running away from only Nancy Turner. To have no greater fear than the danger of being caught by that harmless giggler. It was good to be clasping Richard's hand, unafraid of watchful eyes peering from the window. In a flash of clarity Thorne realized that all the inexplicable joy of this summertime was born of the freedom to clasp Richard's hand.

It was dim and cool beneath the beech trees, like the aisles in an empty church. As they went on their pace slackened. The hushed privacy of the leafy world was conducive to intimate talk. '

"I don't know what you see in Nancy Turner," Richard began. "You never used to play together, but now it seems everywhere I turn I hear that giggle or see that toothy smile. She's too old a chum for you. Cricket."

Nancy was a plump, overdeveloped girl for her age and so obviously boy-struck that her elders found her society slightly wearing.

''She likes to talk to me," Thorne explained.

"What about?"

''Oh, everything."

He frowned. Nancy was beginning to have beaux, a fact which he thoroughly disapproved.

"Half the fun of being in love," said Thorne sagely, "is having an interested listener."

He stopped short in the path. "What do you know about being in love?"

"Nothing. That's what Nancy says."

"And you're an interested listener, I suppose."

"Very."

He made an unintelligible sound that might have been a growl or a cough. He was suddenly very much out of temper. He didn't want that featherbrain sister of Hugh Turner's filling Thorne's head with her silly ideas. He wondered just what she had told Thorne. For that matter, he wondered just how much the little nitwit had to tell. She had been going about with the Henderson boy, and young Chet Henderson was known as a wild one. Richard couldn't imagine what Hugh and Kate were thinking of not to clamp the lid down on Miss Nancy. But that wasn't his concern. Thorne was his concern, and he wasn't going to have her spoiled. She was sweet and fresh and innocent and he was going to keep her that way. He did not want her changed, ever. He grew quite warm thinking about it and looked down at her half fearfully, as though expecting to find some change already occurred.

"When did you start putting your hair up?" he demanded, as though it were the first time he had seen the dark braids wound about her head.

"I've been wearing it this way all summer," said Thorne. "It's cooler."